After a time, with returning strength, the Very Young Man began to think more calmly. He was lost--lost in size--the one thing that the Doctor, when they started down into the ring, had warned them against so earnestly. What a fool he had been to run! He was miles away from them now. He could not make himself large; and were they to get smaller--small enough to see him, they might wander in this barren wilderness for days and never chance to come upon him. The Very Young Man cursed himself for a fool. Why hadn't he kept some of the enlarging drug with him? And then abruptly, he realized something additionally terrifying. The dose of the diminishing drug which he had just taken so thoughtlessly, was the last that remained in that vial. He was utterly helpless. Thousands of miles of rocky country surrounded him--a wilderness devoid of vegetation, of water, and of life. Lying prone upon the ground, which at last had stopped expanding, the Very Young Man gave himself up to terrified reflection. So this was the end--all the dangers they had passed through--their conquests--and the journey out of the ring so near to a safe ending.... And then this! For a time the Very Young Man abandoned hope. There was nothing to do, of course. They could never find him--probably, with women and a child among them they would not dare even to try. They would go safely back to their own world--but he--Jack Bruce--would remain in the ring. He laughed with bitter cynicism at the thought. Even the habitable world of the ring itself, was denied him. Like a lost soul, poised between two worlds, he was abandoned, waiting helpless, until hunger and thirst would put an end to his sufferings. Then the Very Young Man thought of Aura; and with the thought came a new determination not to give up hope. He stood up and looked about him, steeling himself against the flood of despair that again was almost overwhelming. He must return as nearly as possible to the point where he had parted from his friends. It was the only chance he had remaining--to be close enough so if one, or all of them, had become small, they would be able to see him. There was little to choose of direction in the desolate waste around, but dimly the Very Young Man recalled having a low line of hills behind him when he was running. He faced that way now. He had come perhaps six or seven miles; he would return now as nearly as possible over the same route. He selected a gully that seemed to wind in that general direction, and climbing down into it, started off along its floor.